Having examined the invasion and consolidation of the Argentine ant in California, in particular their control over the major port cities, we can now turn to their colonisation of the rest of the world through the exploitation of human-run shipping lanes.
For background details on World War Ant and the Argentine ant supercolony phenomenon start here:
In the previous thread we saw how the VLC (Very Large Colony) controlled access to the ports. One of their first presumed dispersals was to New Zealand, possibly in 1990.
The rapid colonisation of the country has been mapped in some detail. Their impact cannot be overstated. Aside from attacking honey bee hives, native ants and insects, baby birds and even humans, they also destroy ecosystems by recruiting aphids for their honeydew.
It is possible that the Argentine ants will suffer colony collapse with increasing rainfall, but their flexibility and high novelty seeking behaviour leads some experts to conclude that they are "only at the beginning of their invasion of New Zealand". Ominous!
Japan presents another story however. The Argentine ant invasion of Japan has not been a single dispersal, but a brutal multi colony affair, with three supercolonies (A,B and C) ruthlessly battling it out around the port of Kobe.
More worryingly, a new supercolony in Nara prefecture appears to have mastered using the river to increase their nest budding and dispersion mechanisms. Most likely through 'rafting', the Nara clan has rapidly consolidated control around the water's edge.
The impact on Japanese ants has again been documented, unfavourably. Where Argentine ants come into contact with natives they seem to eradicate them quickly. Curiously two species were not destroyed though, one much smaller and weaker and one that lives in trees.
The southern European supercolony dwarfs almost all others, stretching over 6,000km of territory, with two smaller rival colonies (Catalan and Corsican). The scale of the main colony has led to human intervention, hoping to play off the supercolonies against one another.
A truly terrifying realisation has been to discover that the VLC in California and the main colonies in Japan, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii, are all the same colony! They recognise one another and do not attack. The earth is spanned by one single, massive hypercolony
So far we've only focused on one species of ant and how it has spread around the world. But they have competitors, which is what makes this a true world war. The red fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) is the eternal rival and enemy of the Argentine ant.
The huge scale wars fought between the red fire ant and the Argentine across the south-eastern United States has prevented total Argentine dominance, pushing them back to "pockets of resistance" in places like Austin, Texas, and Athens, Georgia.
In the next thread we'll open up the battlefronts to see how Argentine dominance has been challenged by other invasive, unicolonial ant species.
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